I’m starting to get back into the swing of tech at large, and found a business laptop that fits my needs for a portable low power emulation device. When I look to buy it secondhand, because I don’t intend to burn money or the environment unnecessarily, I find dozens of extremely cheap listings without drives. Are these secondhand from businesses removing and drilling the drives or is there something else going on?
Likely what you said- they’re not gonna sell machines can could potentially have sensitive data on them.
A lot of these machines are from schools, doctors offices, hospitals, or libraries. Its more expensive to be set up to properly erase these disks with compliance to the law than it is to destroy and recycle them. Also (at the company I worked for) a lot of the value of the item being sold is tied up in the processor and not the storage.
all those laptops are probably also pre 8th gen processors.
companies dumped them all because Microsoft promotes ewaste be forcing windows11 horse shit which requires Intel 8th gen +
PROPER decommissioning for devices is to remove the drives.
you’re getting Microsoft’s forced ewaste
7th gen is from 2017. Most corporations are on a 4-year cycle, so have already been replaced twice since then. Very few are motivated by the Win11 requirements.
they should be on a cycle, not all companies are. it’s very common to see a lot of smaller ones not do this
They’re removed by the business when they decommission them so the drives can be destroyed to make sure no data gets leaked.
They often don’t have power cables either because they’ll re-use those on the newer models if they can.
I’ve sold or given away a few computers recently, and always remove the HDD first (and list it as such)
Obviously I don’t want some stranger to have all my documents - and deleting the data might not completely work.
Even if we were talking about SSDs and not HDDs, would you really want a drive of unknown origin and history? What I hate is when even the ram is missing, which means it’s been removed and sold separately.
I could question each and every part near endlessly, so I never bothered to consider it. Is it common to substitute for a fresh drive? Should I also swap the bios chip while I’m at it?
SSD’s and HDD’s are a wear item with limited lifespans, determined by how heavily used they were in the past.
They’re probably not used too hard in corporate environments, so after a health check, I’d probably keep using what came in it unless reliability was paramount. I have bought a used SSD before for an older laptop, and so far its been reliable.
No the bios chip is a bit much. As for the drive, even though there’s software to check age and wear, you don’t know what it has been through so when buying used it’d be better to stay alert.
I’m assuming you’re in the US and looking at Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook, or Lenovo Thinkpad, possibly on eBay from a recycling company.
Many large corporations buy these with a 3 year warranty, and stretch those to 4 or 5 years unless they break. Once the devices are too old, they go through a decom process. This usually includes sanitizing the data. Depending on the corporation, this could mean a secure erase, or it could mean physical destruction with a grinder. Then they send it to a recycler or refurbisher, who pays them a pittance for the remaining value. It’s also why they are frequently missing the hard drive caddy - the difference in value is minimal, so they remove it the fastest way possible.
Power bricks and docks are usually usable on other models/generations, so those aren’t sent to recycling until they are useless. That’s why you often see laptops listed without bricks.
It’s also how you would typically fence a stolen laptop.
That was what I was worried about. Particularly due to the number that lack charging cables.
